This course combines the theory of individual and average causal effects in the sense of J. Neyman and D. B. Rubin with analysis techniques of structural equation modelling. All designs and models for the analysis are developed for the purpose to learn about individual, conditional and/or average causal effects. Unlike other courses on the analysis of treatment effects, it uses structural equation modelling (with or without latent variables) instead of analysis of variance techniques, the General Linear Model or related techniques. As will be shown, this will enable us to learn not only about average and conditional effects, but, in specific models, also about individual causal effects.

This course is a synthesis of different traditions in methodology: Rubin's approach to causality, the Campbellian tradition of quasi-experimentation and internal validity, and structural equation modeling, especially latent state-trait modeling, latent change modeling and latent growth curve modeling.

The present workshop, "Introduction to the Analysis of Causal Effects with EffectLite, LISREL and Mplus" aims at those interested in data analysis in experimental and quasi-experimental studies involving covariates such as one or several pretests, a discrete treatment variable, and one or several outcome variables. EffectLite is a program developed by Prof. Dr. R. Steyer and his colleagues, which will be provided to all participants in the workshop. It analyzes a generalized multivariate analysis of variance and covariance. It creates LISREL or Mplus input files, reads and interprets the results, computes some statistics, and produces an output file containing the most important results. EffectLite does not assume homogeneity of variances (in the univariate case with a single outcome variable) or covariance matrices (in the multivariate case with two or more outcome variables) of the outcome variables between groups. Furthermore, it allows analyzing mean differences between groups with respect to (a) several manifest outcome variables, (b) one or more latent outcome variables, and (c) a mixture of the two kinds of outcome variables. The results include estimates of conditional and average effects with respect to several manifest covariates or with respect to one or more latent covariates, and a mixture of the two kinds of covariates. The covariate(s) may also be qualitative. In this case we estimate and test average effects for non-orthogonal analysis of variance designs, provided that the covariates are specified as qualitative indicator variables. If the covariates fulfil certain assumptions, the program estimates and tests the average causal effects.

In the workshop we will:

present the theory of individual and average causal effects,

show how to use EffectLite, LISREL and Mplus for this class of models, and